


Still Waters

by SnowStormSkies



Series: Surrender [5]
Category: Tokio Hotel
Genre: BDSM, Collars, Dom/sub, M/M, Multi, Punishment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 11:36:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowStormSkies/pseuds/SnowStormSkies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom's collar has traveled with him through his journey between boy and man, helped him to navigate the difficult seas around sexuality and desire, and it's kept him going forward through pain and hurt. It's an old friend now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Waters

**Author's Note:**

> This was for the prompt of LEATHER for the October Mini Bingo. It fits into the same world as Running Doesn't Change Anything, Cool Water, Holding Back, and Against the Wall. It's Tom's musing on his collar. Thanks to casey270 for the beta!

 

**Still Waters**

Tom doesn’t know where Gustav found it, or why he thought it was the best kind for Tom, but his collar really is _his_ now.

It didn’t start off that way – oh, hell no.

When Gustav brought it home eight weeks into their bizarre four way relationship within the band, Tom didn’t understand. Wasn’t his word enough? Wasn’t his agreement to be ‘submissive’ as far as he needed to go? Why did they need something like a collar to cement it?

No, was the answer. Tom used words like Bill used make up – he hid behind them, a fast pitter-patter of lies and half truths to make people believe him or just to get them to fuck off, and they didn’t want him to treat their burgeoning relationship like that.

He needed something real to remind him of his promises to be submissive - properly submissive too. Not just ‘submissive’ as though it’s just a _thing_. It’s not. It’s a real part of his life.

He didn’t hate it then, but he didn’t love it either. He just… got on with it. That’s what happens when Tom doesn’t like something; he had to like it or lump it, but it wouldn’t change for him at all.

So he got stuck with it.

The first night wasn’t hard with it – Georg just buckled it into place and told him to leave it on until morning, and Tom just… ignored it. It was weird – it pressed against his throat, a constant reminder of the agreement that he usually tried to shove to the back of his mind, but it wasn’t too much for him. By the time he went to bed a full ten hours after getting it, it was just a mild irritation.

And it continued that way – something to ignore, not enjoy or actively hate – all the way through six whole days, and Tom was sure that he wouldn’t change his mind on it.

Until he got his first punishment.

He was a fucking idiot, lying to Bill about where he was going and heading out on the town instead of going to Andi’s house. He should have known he’d be found out. Andi couldn’t lie for shit then, and he still can’t now. Especially to Bill. One look and he cracked, probably.

And Tom landed himself firmly in a red punishment – the first one that Bill led, and _by God,_ Tom learnt that Bill was not a soft touch like he’d thought. Tom knew that Bill could push hard back against Tom but all his red punishments before had been led by Georg and Gustav. Not Bill.

So he thought Bill would be pretty…. not bad at it, but not as firm as the other two, maybe. Not as strict.

Ha. Was he fuck.

Bill stripped him right back.

Tom got a spanking for lying, and another one for bringing someone else into his lie, because that’s unfair. He got enemas – two a week for four whole fucking weeks – and no dessert, and no going out, and no TV too because Bill just had to throw that in to really push Tom.

But that was the time when Bill only let him wear the collar.

It wasn’t like he had to go in _public_ naked, thank God, but he just… wasn’t given clothes to wear around the house that they shared. Bill usually laid out his clothes for him in the morning or helped to pick something if Tom wasn’t on punishment, but while Bill was in charge for that punishment, Tom got _nothing._ If he was cold, he could have a blanket, and maybe even cuddles on the sofa (Tom is a total cuddle slut, but that’s beside the point) but that was as far as Bill would let him cover up. While he was in those four walls, he had to be naked.

_Lies get exposed, and so do liars, Tom._

Yeah, he got exposed all right. All fucking over, red spanked backside and all.

So Tom got a long time to get familiar with the feeling of the collar being the only thing close to his skin.

It was a pretty simple collar – a martingale collar was what Gustav called it, but Tom just recognises it from the length of chain that usually sits against the back of his neck, that starts off cool against his skin before it warms to his skin. It’s always reminding him every time he throws his head back that he’s wearing it too – the unbending metal firm and immovable.

The leather is soft now – Gustav’s conditioned it to butter softness with the oils and working it carefully, but the first time Tom put it on it was stiff as fuck: unbending as the rules were in those days, digging into his neck before they worked out the best way to place it. The buckles are still as shiny as they were when Tom had it put on him for the first time, though, and they used to catch his eye as they flashed in mirrors or shiny surfaces when he went by. Now, he hardly notices.

He likes to feel it under his fingers, mindlessly flicking his thumb against it as he thinks, or as he daydreams.

When he was punished by Bill, he did it so much it started to wear just in one particular place, a tiny little scar on the otherwise pristine black leather, and he does it now.

He likes to hold onto it too, hooking two fingers around the leather to keep him together when he’s _this_ close to falling apart, and it’s never something he’s been told off for. When he’s been spanked, or when he’s been given an enema, sometimes those two fingers wrapped around the first sign of submission he ever had are enough to keep him together.

Not always. But most of the time.

It’s not his favourite part of being submissive to Georg, Gustav, and Bill. That’s something he’s still working out. but it’s definitely not the collar. Or the being spanked.

Or the enemas. Those are… a big part of why he hates red card punishments, to be honest.

But the collar is a part of his submission – it fits in there with the whole role that Tom’s found himself in, and it feels _good._

It feels good sometimes to know that he has this thing to cling to, to hold onto through the hardest points and to show that he _can_ take it because he’s done it before. To know that it’s been four years since he first got it, and every single punishment and reward is worn into the leather is a good feeling.

Tom’s collar is _his._

It’s bound up with his past, with sex, love, and punishment. It’s made up of the rules that he’s been learning for the last few years, the ones that have been laid down for him by Georg, Gustav, and Bill about being obedient, being honest, being submissive and _good._

Tom has to hold onto that when he’s struggling to knuckle under the rules, desperate to buck against that which confines him.

But it’ll keep him on the right path. That’s what he has to trust.


End file.
